Technopoly by Neil Postman
Published 1992 · 65,000 words · about 4 hours at an average pace · Media & Technology, Nonfiction, Philosophy
How hard is Technopoly to read?
Technopoly scores 33 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 35 out of 100
- Media theory and philosophical vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 32 out of 100
- Abstraction: 42 out of 100
- Theoretical framework for understanding technology's cultural effects.
- Information density: 50 out of 100
- Dense with argument, historical analysis, and cultural criticism.
- Narrative indirection: 80 out of 100
- Thesis-driven. Direct argumentation.
- Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
- Technopoly as concept. Technology as ideology.
- Ironic distance: 18 out of 100
- Polemical. Sardonic about technological optimism.
- Resolution withholding: 15 out of 100
- Postman offers resistance, not solutions.
- Structural complexity: 22 out of 100
- Historical progression building to a theoretical framework.
How Technopoly is regarded
Technopoly holds a literary regard score of 50 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.